1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to the field of flat display panel manufacture, and more particularly to the interconnection structure and the assembly process of driver components in flat display panels such as liquid crystal display (LCD) panels.
2. Description of the Related Art
The construction of flat display panels such as LCDs generally includes pixel cells arranged in array and driven by means of driver components placed at the peripheral area of the display area. The driver components are conventionally operable to output addressing and data image signals to the pixel cells to control the illumination or extinction for achieving image displaying.
The driver components conventionally include scan driver integrated circuits (ICs) and data driver ICs along two peripheral sides of the display panel. Flexible printed circuits are coupled with the scan and data driver ICs to provide signals such as power, display or ground signals. Many technical approaches are known in the art to assemble the driver components on the LCD panel.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,618,111 issued to Nagata et al., the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, describes a liquid crystal panel in which the driver ICs are embedded on tape carrier packages distributed along the periphery of the display panel. The driver ICs electrically connect via the wiring of the tape carrier packages to wires that couple the driver ICs to a circuit substrate located at a corner of the display panel.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,624,868 issued to Terukina et al., the disclosure of which is also incorporated herein by reference, describes a LCD panel structure in which the driver ICs are mounted on the glass substrate. This reference discloses a structure including wire interconnections that a flexible printed circuit is coupled with a common wiring through a connector at an area between two ICs.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US2001/0015709 to Imajo et al., the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, describes a mounting scheme in which the driver ICs are directly mounted on the glass substrate of the LCD panel. Various signals including power signals are supplied to the driver ICs terminals of a flexible printed circuit connected at an outer side of the driver ICs. The flexible printed circuit can also include a protruding portion in an area between two driver ICs. The protruding portion can be provided with a chip capacitor connected with terminals of the flexible printed circuit.
Improvements could be made to the aforementioned assembly schemes of driver components. In particular, the conventional interconnection of the flexible printed circuit with the driver ICs is usually achieved via a complex connector structure or via at least two anisotropic conductive layers respectively attaching the ICs and flexible printed circuit on the substrate. None of these techniques is economically desirable.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a flat display panel implementation and an assembly process that can reduce the manufacture cost and the processing time in the assembly of driver components in the flat display panel.